Acting Classes

We've been signing up for every acting and modeling workshop AMTC is offering so I'm a little behind on updating.  She's in an interesting time with this- it reminds me of how I felt when she was a brand new tiny baby sometimes.  You get pregnant, you're SO excited and nervous to have this baby, you don't really know what to expect but you know it's going to be GREAT!  You're prepared and you know what to do and all your friends say you'll be an awesome mom!  Then the baby is up all night screaming and you can't figure out why and in the morning you're just so tired.  You don't feel like an awesome mom and you're pretty sure you're going to ruin this poor kid.... It doesn't mean you're planning to give up, and it doesn't mean you love that baby any less, but it's just been a hard night.  You're overwhelmed.  It's harder than you thought it would be.

That's where it seemed like she was after our last session.  She LOVES runway modeling- it doesn't make her nervous at all and she's got the moves down and thinks it's so much fun.  The photography part started to be harder this time and she got pretty frustrated.  The timing is difficult for her- they were trying to teach her how to move really slowly and just change one body part at a time so that the camera can have time to capture each pose.  She kept wanting to pop from one to the next, which is going to make for blurry pictures and not give her a big range of emotions on camera.  And when she's having trouble doing something it makes her angry, and so of course then it's even harder to get it down.  I like that they don't make a lot of differentiation between adults and kids- they just throw her in, but at the same time, there were only a couple kids in there and she was the youngest.  I think a little bit of one on one time would do her good, but they haven't had time to do that so far.  There are usually at least a hundred people in these sessions.

The acting scares her a bit too, but it's inconsistent.  I can't always predict it. Sometimes she'll get up in an improv act and get on a roll and just go with it, and sometimes she sits there frozen and lets the other people carry her.  Sometimes she struts up there and does her monologue with confidence, and other times she weasels up there sideways and mutters while wringing her hands.

On the drive home she was upset.  "I just want to be in movies and commercials and tell people about God.  I didn't think it was going to be this much work!"  Well, yes.  It's work.  I'm finding out that models do MUCH more work than it looks like from the outside.

So we have another workshop next week, and she's a bit apprehensive about it.  I'm hoping that this is the time she breaks through that wall and really starts to be confident and have fun.  Actors have to have no shame, and she's in the stage of life where everything is embarrassing and you wonder constantly what people think of you.  It's a hard combination.  I really think that if she gets it now though, it's going to save her so much grief later.  I'd love to have a teenager who didn't cave to peer pressure and did what she wanted and knew was right.

Here's a 60 second improv she did.  I don't know how well you're gonna be able to hear it but I'll give it a shot.  The prompt was that they are all neighbors on the same block and somebody new just moved in.  They're deciding if they should go introduce themselves.  I was really hoping she'd leap in and talk about gluten when they went in the pie direction, but she didn't think of it until afterwards.  My favorite is the two girls on the end- what if they're killers?  well, killers like pie!  let's take them a pie and maybe they won't kill us!  haha!!!

And just because, here's the hair we're not allowed to cut.  This was in May and it's even longer now.  I wish it looked this shiny and straight all the time.  She's starting to say she wishes they told her to cut it off.  I told her with that kind of attitude, she'd get a job like Emma Watson did for Hermione Granger and not be allowed to cut her hair for eight years.  :)